Free Along Came a Demon by Linda Welch Page A

his face. Then he changed, right in front of me.
    It was slow and it was subtle. Very gradually, his face filled out, eliminating the gauntness. A flush spread over his skin as if the blood came nearer the surface. His teeth blunted and were smooth, dazzling white. His eyes were still a startling blue, but now warm. The metallic luster to his hair faded. And an incredibly handsome, but human man smiled at me as if I were the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.
    I gaped. He grinned at my expression. “Interesting. I wonder why convincing you I am human takes considerably more effort.”
    I backed inside, hitting the door hard with my uninjured hip, pushing it open.
    He tried to follow me inside but stopped on the doorstep, his right foot an inch from the scattered metal filings. He looked down and hissed again.
    I slammed the door.
    I went in the kitchen swiping beads of sweat off my face with my sleeve.
    Mel and Jack followed me from hall to kitchen. “What are we going to do?” Jack cried.
    “ We?” Mel asked as she shot to the window and looked out.
    Jack stood in front of me and puffed out his chest. “You know I would’ve seen him off if I could, Tiff.”
    Mel’s laughter pealed through the room. “She knows you’re a wuss.”
    He turned on her. “And you’re a lecherous hussy. Gorge this and Gorge that, and how he’s such a pretty-boy. You have no idea—”
    “ Hussy!” Mel shrieked.
    “ Hussy?” I echoed. Hadn’t heard the word used in a long time. I flung up my hands to shoulder level, palms out. “Enough, you guys!”
    Mel came over. “We worry about you.”
    “ We would go out of our minds if anything happened to you,” Jack said.
    A small warmth grew in the region of my heart, but Jack spoiled it by adding, “We’d be back to how it was before you moved in. Me and her, standing around doing nothing day in, day out.” He stood tall in a dramatic pose. “I think I would kill myself.”

    Afternoon, and I was damned if I would cower in the house all day. I went outside to talk to Lindy, toting the Ruger. She looked up in alarm when she saw it.
    “ Relax, Lindy. It can’t hurt you.”
    She sighed. “I suppose nothing can hurt me now, except the pain in my heart.”
    She didn’t mean it literally; she thought of Lawrence.
    I had to tell her he was still missing, but I didn’t say anything about his stuff disappearing from the apartment, or nobody remembering him.
    She put her hands to her face. “How can he just disappear? Where is he?”
    “ Perhaps you’d know better than me. Who are his special friends, Lindy? Who would he go to?”
    “ I don’t know who he plays with at school and he’s never had a play-date. My poor little boy!”
    I couldn’t even give her a consoling pat. “Lindy, we will find him. Don’t doubt it.”
    She stumbled to her feet. “I’m going back to the apartment. If he can, he’ll go home.”
    I stood up with her. “It’s not your apartment anymore. They’ve probably already cleared out your stuff.” Which, if she did go, could account for Lawrence’s things no longer being there.
    “ Lawrence won’t know.”
    “ You tried it before and you couldn’t leave the yard.”
    But she tried again, picking up speed as she moved away from the fruit trees. She stopped suddenly as if she hit an invisible wall. She stood still a moment, then tried again. Same result. She sagged, shoulders slumping.
    Something she said sent my mind spinning, something I completely blew off before. “… except the pain in my heart.”
    Her heart . She had a blurred memory of a tall, yellow-haired figure coming right at her. She didn’t see him properly, but that didn’t matter because unless their killer is behind them, the dead see with something other than their eyes. I need a clear visual, but the dead don’t. She didn’t remember his face.
    The demon did not kill her. She did die a natural death.
    She should not be here.
    But he touched her at the moment of death.